Resources

Librarians Love a Challenge

August 19, 2010

We’ve all gotten so accustomed to having the Internet at our fingertips no matter where we are, that it’s easy to forget that there are other resources available to us. One of the benefits of going to the library and looking things up in actual books, is that in the process of doing your research, [...]

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Phraseology

May 28, 2009

One of the many responsibilities of an editor is making sure that common sayings are used correctly. This obviously includes checking and correcting the phrasing (it’s “running the gauntlet”, not “running through the gauntlet”). For historically-based projects, it also means verifying that a figure of speech actually existed at the time that it’s being used. [...]

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Style Guides

May 7, 2009

When it comes to grammar, punctuation, and general formatting, there are a lot of gray areas that are often a matter of personal preference and experience. How are you supposed to know what to hyphenate, what to capitalize, where the punctuation belongs in dialog, and whether to use underlines or italics? Should you still use [...]

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Grammarphobic?

January 15, 2009

When it comes to commonly misunderstood rules of spelling or grammar (like whether to use “discreet” or “discrete”, “fewer” or “less”, or “as if it was” over “as if it were”), I’ve often found that a writer who is uncertain about the correct usage will alternate back and forth. It may be completely unintentional, but [...]

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EFA SF Bay

October 27, 2008

The Editorial Freelancers Association is (as its website will tell you) “a professional resource for editorial specialists and those who hire them”. Its members include editors, writers, indexers, proofreaders, researchers, desktop publishers, translators, and more, and some of the benefits of membership include networking opportunities for members, job postings, online references and resources, and the [...]

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The Phrontistery

September 25, 2008

As language sites go, The Phrontistery is one of my long-time favorites. More a compendium than a thesaurus, it’s an excellent resource for expanding and brightening your vocabulary, or even for browsing for ideas. While one of the main features of the site is the International House of Logorrhea, a free online dictionary of weird [...]

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Making Grammar Interesting

July 28, 2008

Before anyone was Eating, Shooting, or Leaving, a series of lesser-known books were already making grammar fun and accessible. The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed is for punctuation as The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed is [...]

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A different kind of search engine

July 10, 2008

Sometimes if you don’t remember the title or author of a book, you can still find it by searching on the name of a character or a fictional city, but how do you find a book again if you only remember the plot? Allreaders.com has the answer: a search engine that allows you to find [...]

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